Now and Forever (46 page)

Shannon leaped to her feet, overturning the can of Diet Coke. "See what you made me do."

Dakota pushed a napkin across the table to mop up the spill. "Falling in love is nothing to be ashamed of."

"The man's a stranger, Dakota. He dropped into my backyard less than twenty-four hours ago. I'd have to be insane to fall in love with someone I don't even know."

"Maybe so," said Dakota with maddening calm, "but the fact is you're in love with him and he's not going to stay around. You know it. I know it. And sooner or later he's going to know it too."

Shannon felt her control begin to crack.
 
She thrust her shaking hands into the pockets of her linen trousers and met her friend's eyes. "Stay out of this, Dakota. I love you dearly, but this time I'm asking you to butt out."

"I'd do anything in the world for you," Dakota said with a sad smile, "but that's the one thing I don't think I can do. Like it or not, we're in this together."

Chapter Ten

The garage was a large enclosure with room enough for at least three cars such as the one Shannon drove.

Andrew quickly found a place for the balloon and wicker basket in a stall to the left of Shannon's car. A sense of unease tugged at him as he pushed the entire contraption up against the back wall and covered it with a large white cloth he found on a shelf. Why had the balloon not vanished from his life the way it had with Emilie and Zane? Shannon's friend seemed to believe there was meaning to all of these events and he was not above wondering if that might not be so.

In truth it had thus far been a most disturbing day. The glittering world he'd imagined did indeed exist but there was darkness at its heart that threw a shadow across the landscape. He had been surrounded by splendor that all else took for granted and yet in the midst of that splendor he had encountered the sharp blade of violence, as senseless as it was unexpected.

And still no one seemed surprised. Not the painted lady at the mall to whom it had been directed, nor Shannon who had suffered the effects of such violence within the sacred bonds of her marriage.

The world he came from lacked much in the way of luxury but at least a man knew who his enemies were and where they might be found.

There was a sense of defeat about everything and everyone, a curious lack of the commitment that propelled a man or woman to right the wrongs of the world. They took the wonders of their time for granted, as if flying through the air or owning a king's ransom in jewels was their right and not the miracle it truly was. It was as if the endless string of wars had extinguished the flames of righteousness and left only bitter spoils.

Shannon had said it to him in plain and simple words, that the average man stood little chance of making his mark on the world - and no chance at all of influencing history. How had such a thing happened in two short centuries?

Their trip to the mall had taught Andrew that the time had come for him to take charge of the situation and adapt himself to this new century with as much dispatch as he could muster. He had always been master of his own fate, willing to rely on no man for direction.

How difficult it must have been for Zane to be thrust back in time to a world that did not easily recognize his worth. Not only was his currency worthless, so were his credentials. And that was a bitter pill to swallow.

During his time at Harvard he had learned that knowledge was power. He was an intelligent man. He had chosen to travel forward in time of his own free will. Now he must make it his business to learn to function in this world as swiftly and efficiently as possible or resign himself to being a leech upon others for the rest of his days.

At first he had not understood Shannon's insistence that his story remain a secret between them but today at the mall her fears suddenly made sense. There was a hunger in this world that he'd not seen or felt anywhere before, a need that he could not define but felt as a persistent vibration in the very air he breathed. What could they want, he wondered, when miracles were the stuff of everyday life?

He spent much of the afternoon at work repairing the windows of the structure Shannon called a garage. He wielded the hammer like a weapon. With every nail he pounded into place he pictured the supercilious clerks he'd encountered at the mall, all of whom had found great amusement in his dependence upon Shannon.

Apparently even in the year 1993, it was the man's place to provide clothing and sustenance for the woman. He'd felt a fool and worse each time she reached for that shiny rectangle she used to obtain credit from the shopkeepers.

An Am Ex card, Shannon had called it. The room that moved up and down was called an elevator while the silver stairs that carried you up of their own volition went by the odd name escalator. Men's trousers were called pants or slacks. Shoes no longer came with buckles. Hair could be long or short or anywhere in between and there was not a powdered wig in sight.

In general people seemed to wear as few items of clothing as they could and Andrew doubted he would ever grow accustomed to seeing a woman's nipples looking back at him through the sheer fabric of her bodice. And then there were cars and trucks and the flying metal birds called airplanes.

He knew he must make an effort to adapt to his new situation. He would no longer say "mistress." When he did not understand a reference he would wait and cobble together its meaning with bits and pieces of other information and clues. He would find a way to make a place for himself in this world, even if it was bigger and faster and more dangerous than he'd ever imagined possible.

 
#

"What manner of food is this?" He looked askance at the triangle of dough covered in a red sauce and melted white cheese.

"Pizza," said Shannon, eating it with her hands in a most disconcerting - yet appealing - fashion. "It's Italian."

"Italian? Is such foreign fare common?"

She wiped the side of her mouth with a square of soft paper. "As common as hot dogs."

"Sweet Jesus!" He stared at her in alarm. "Has it come to that?"

She looked at him and burst into laughter. "I don't mean the four-legged kind, Andrew. It's--" She stopped. "Actually it sounds pretty disgusting, but it's ground up meat pushed into a casing and boiled. We serve it with mustard and sauerkraut."

"Aye," he said. "'Tis a vile concoction you describe." He took a bite of the pizza, struggling with a long stretchy string of the mild white cheese. "This, however, is most agreeable." He took another bite then looked across the table. "This came in a box?"

"That's how they deliver it," Shannon explained. "I called in my order and thirty minutes later they brought the pizza here to me." She reached for a strange-looking object, roughly the size of a woman's shoe, then pulled a long rod from its depths.

He watched, mouth agape, as she touched her finger to the center of the object in quick movements much like playing the piano. Grinning, she handed it to him.

"Put it to your ear," she ordered, then laughed. "No, not that way. Turn it around."

He did as told and heard an odd ringing noise then a human voice, clear as day, talking right into his ear. "Good afternoon, everybody. At 6:05 the temperature at Newark Airport is 85 degrees and - "

Andrew dropped the object to the table top. "There is something unnatural about such a thing."

"It's a telephone," Shannon said, obviously amused by his reaction. "Probably one of the most important inventions the world has ever seen."

"'Tis a foolish invention," he said. "How can you judge the worth of a man if you cannot look him in the eye?"

"You wouldn't think it a foolish invention if you were talking to someone in England, would you?"

He picked up the telephone and turned it over in his hand. "How can this object make conversation possible across the ocean?"

"I know it has something to do with fiber-optic cables and satellites and all sorts of things."

"All of that so a man can have strange food delivered in a box."

"If you want to put it that way, yes," said Shannon.

"People make a living that way?"

"A good living," Shannon said. "Fast foods are big business."

"Does no one sit down at the family table and partake of a normal supper?"

"This is a normal supper these days, Andrew. Families are on the run during the week. It's a rare clan that has the opportunity to sit down for a meal at the same time."

"Where do they run?"

"They work late, they go to night school, soccer practice, Little League, Girl Scouts, Pop Warner, you name it, they're out there doing it." She sprinkled red flakes on top of her pizza. "And when they're not out there, they're at home watching TV."

"The moving pictures on the small glass window?"

She nodded. "If you don't feel like going out to see the world, TV brings the world into your home." She considered him for a moment. "If you want to learn about this strange place you're in, TV is one of the best ways to start."

"Have you no books?"

"Thousands of them," she said. "Finish your pizza and I'll show you the library."

 
#

He's like a kid in a candy shop,
Shannon thought as Andrew devoured
Timetables of American History.
He hadn't moved from his spot near the window. His torso was curved over the book, almost as if he were protecting it from harm.

Her heart went out to him. Talk about culture shock. The poor man was racing through the pages, flying from the minuet to the Virginia reel to rap without a parachute.

She recognized in him a need to know all there was to know, to absorb as much information as he possibly could in order to arm himself against the unknown. Dakota's warning repeated in her brain.
Temporary...this is only temporary.
Shannon wasn't a fool. She knew the time would come when he moved on. You didn't travel through more than two hundred years of time and space to content yourself with a small town in central New Jersey. Or with one very lonely woman.

Where on earth had that thought come from? She was alone but she wasn't lonely. Not really. She had Dakota and the people who ran her shelters, not to mention the women and children who passed through them on their way to happier, better lives. And, God knew, she had a social life other people would envy. An endless array of society functions and charity balls and luncheons that would gobble up as much of her time as she would allow. Her picture was a staple in local society columns.

She wasn't looking for a relationship with a man. She didn't need a man to make herself complete.
Are you sure of that?
the same small voice asked. Wasn't there one small part of her heart that still yearned for home and family, for someone to share her days and warm her nights? She'd trained herself not to wish for the impossible and it annoyed her to fall prey again to those old longings.

Dakota was right, she thought, struggling to shake off the melancholy mood she'd fallen under. There was nothing permanent about any of this. As soon as he grew comfortable with 20th century ways, he would be gone. Men like Andrew McVie weren't meant to spend their days lounging by the side of a swimming pool, sipping margaritas and listening to baseball on the radio.

He was a dynamic man from a dynamic time and sooner or later he'd be looking to make his mark on the world in which he found himself.

And she would be left behind, sitting alone in her fortress, safe from anything that could cause her harm...including love.

 
#

Valley Forge. The terrible winter at Morristown. The War of 1812. Abraham Lincoln and the unimaginable horrors of the War Between the States. The pain of Reconstruction. The Spanish-American War.

As he read on, Andrew felt as if he were being pummeled from all sides, battered and bruised by decades of struggle. Aye, there were triumphs along the way - the Westward Expansion, the Industrial Revolution - but it seemed to him that each of those triumphs was offset by strife.

World War I and its legacy of shell-shocked veterans whose nerves were permanently damaged by something called mustard gas. His gut knotted as he read on to World War II where millions of people were slaughtered cold-bloodedly for their religion or nationality or choice of friends. Try as he might he could not comprehend an entire world engulfed in the flames of warfare.

In 1950 warfare erupted again in Korea, an island on the other side of the world and then in Viet Nam, and the Holy Land, and Arabia and Bosnia--